Judge rules against Hamilton employee suing councilman

HAMILTON — Hamilton Councilman Kevin Meara doesn’t have to keep quiet, at least according to the judge in the defamation suit against him.

Friday morning, Mercer County Judge Douglas Hurd ruled against the plaintiff, a township employee, in a motion to stop him from spreading the allegations that prompted the suit. Namely, Meara said, according to the suit, that the employee stole from a nonprofit, made sexual advances on vulnerable women, was a sex addict, and made sexual advances on a high school student.

The township employee, Public Works inspector Paul Tessein, sought an injunction against Meara which would prohibit him from spreading those allegations. The judge denied the motion, at least partially because both sides dispute the facts in the case.

“I’m really focusing on the fact there is a dispute as to whether these statements were accurate and what the context was and those types of things have to be played out in discovery,” Hurd said.

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Tessein, through his lawyers, has said that the statements are false and therefore defamatory, but Meara’s attorneys and the township, dispute that.

Now, the case could go to discovery and a trial.

But mediation, rather than a trial, could be the eventual end of the case. Meara’s attorney suggested they move the case to a mediation procedure and Melissa Schroder, there representing Tessein, said she would have to speak to her client about it.

The suit, filed in November by Tessein’s attorney, Matthew Wolf, alleges that Meara “maliciously, willfully, recklessly and, in the alternative, negligently, sought to hurt Plaintiff through words and deeds.”

In its pages, the suit alleges that Meara, both as a citizen and council member, sought to tear down Tessein’s reputation and position in the township starting in 2009, after an intervention with Meara’s friends.

That ramped up in November 2011 when, according to the suit, Meara sent a widely circulated email comparing Tessein to convicted sex offender Jerry Sandusky.

“...over the past year, defendant has knotched (sic) up his personal, vindictive and spiteful campaign against Plaintiff and has resorted to using his official office to seek to have Plaintiff fired from his employment without cause,” the suit said.

Meara also told Tessein’s supervisor that Tessein was a sex addict and tried to get him fired “without cause,” according to the suit.

The initial complaint details a friendship and working relationship that fell through over the years. The suit said Tessein worked to get Meara elected to council in 2007 and the two worked to found City of Angels, a nonprofit that works with at-risk youth and victims of substance abuse.

The suit also includes the Nov. 2011 email supposedly from Meara. Titled “paul tessein” and sent to undisclosed recipients, it goes into some of the details of Meara’s allegations.

The email says that, once Meara was approached by women who said Tessein had made sexual advances toward them during interventions, he said Tessein was “no longer welcomed” at City of Angels and he also informed Tessein’s sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous.

“The thing is, that Paul has no license to revoke and all these women were over 18. He knows how to skirt the system, but did all this stop him?” the email said.

Tessein is suing Meara and the township for defamation, being portrayed in a false light, negligent defamation, creating a hostile work environment and discrimination and seeking compensatory and punitive damages.